


Space Between Heartbeats

by violentdarlings



Category: Wiedźmin | The Witcher - All Media Types, Wiedźmin | The Witcher Series - Andrzej Sapkowski
Genre: Age Difference, Emotional Baggage, F/M, Porn with Feelings, Spring, no foreplay we die like Witchers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-11
Updated: 2020-03-11
Packaged: 2021-02-28 22:47:35
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,055
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23104978
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/violentdarlings/pseuds/violentdarlings
Summary: Vesemir on the Path.
Comments: 2
Kudos: 30





	Space Between Heartbeats

Vesemir is not so old that he does not take to the Path, for all he is the oldest living Witcher. His younger compatriots, what little of them remain, would not think less of him for it for ‘retiring’, he knows, but to stay shut up in Kaer Morhen all year round, alone in autumn summer spring, waiting endlessly for news that another of his brothers have been cut down in the field –

It would be the unmaking of him, a worse torment than the aches in his knees and back, the weariness that dogs his steps. Besides, there are always things that need killing, always soft city folk willing to pay decent coin for a grizzled, looming bodyguard to protect them on their travels. Vesemir gets by, and is usually able to come back to the crumbling ruin of his only home with enough coin to lay provisions in for winter, when the bitter cold prevents anything but huddling in Kaer Morhen’s great hall, ale in his mug, his fellows by his side.

But now. Now it is spring, late spring, the days just coming into their own, sunlight dappling green foliage and glinting on the water. It’s almost indecent, practically obscene, for such beauty after the long deprivations of winter, the raging howl of the storm, the vicious bite of it that cuts through cloth and fur and leather. Vesemir thinks this every spring, when the snow eases away to reveal new life in the soil, the tiny shy stalks of the verdant grass peeping through the earth. When the flowers start to bloom and the colour of them is as shocking as the bloom of fresh blood, after so long of white and black and grey.

He is old, it is true, but he is not so long from youth that a tiny, tender corner of his heart cannot take joy in the spring.

It is the same with the humans. Rare that he is on the Path in winter, but he has been late before returning to Kaer Morhen, wanting desperately to hurry but aware to do so would court disaster. Human, bundled up so heavily they may well be bears, hiding their flesh from the cold and the wind. Small bears, perhaps, but no less fierce for their size, when he rides through their villages, simple weapons clutched in their chilled hands.

He could cut through them like the plough turning fresh earth, if he so chose. He chooses not to. Every time, it’s a choice, and he is never sure that he will make the right one the next time he needs to.

Vesemir can kill as easily as breathing, but not humans, not unless they force his hand. When he sets out for Kaer Morhen that spring, he starts with a village he sees nearly every year, whose river is a regular habitat to drowners. He doesn’t even bother to head into town first, just gets the job done, and brings a sack of severed heads to the mayor’s assistant, a young red-haired man who barely looks old enough to shave. Still, the lad knows the way of things, and counts out the usual fee, and Vesemir dumps the bag of heads as he heads through the town.

He might as well leave. He doesn’t need to stay, he isn’t even bloody from the fight, and the weather is glorious, the sky vivid blue over his head and staining out to a lighter colour towards the horizon. That horizon has been his companion for years out of mind. He could be halfway to the next town by the time he needs to bed down for the night.

He might as well leave. But there’s a girl smiling at him from the side of the road, and there is a coin in her hand.

Geralt’s bloody song.

Vesemir pauses, looks down at her from the imposing height of his horse. He doesn’t bother to name his horses, or so he tells the younger Witchers, will swear and avow the same until the day he is put in his grave. But her secret name is Daisy, and Vesemir says it in front of no one bar the horse herself, soft whispers in response to her patient whickers.

“You have work for me?” he asks, swinging down from his greater height. He is still much taller than her standing, but that cannot be helped. She doesn’t appear intimidated.

“You are strong,” she replies, which is unusual. Usually they say, you are a Witcher, but she seems to know that already. Vesemir looks at her more closely. Her brown hair is pinned up out of her eyes, her dress plain and without ornamentation. Poor, but surviving. “The winter took my mother and father, and the other men in the village have their own families. There is some work that requires a strong man, in my home.”

He can only imagine. Mucking out a stable, or hauling sacks of grain. Boring, manual labour that he could do with his eyes closed. He’s done worse for coin. “All right,” Vesemir means to say, only it comes out more of a grunt than actual words. “Mistress…”

“Just Sasha,” she replies, and Vesemir falls into step beside her as she leads him to a small cottage towards the outskirts of the town. “You can picket your horse there,” she tells him, pointing to a nearby water trough. “If you wish, you may stow your pack in the woodshed. I’ll be inside, when you’re ready to start work.”

The nature of the work becomes clear at once, when Vesemir enters the house and the girl jumps into his arms. Vesemir catches her out of reflex, registering too late the signs of arousal on her; pupils dilated, breath quick and sharp, and the smell of her too, both alien and familiar. “You prevailed on me dishonestly,” he tells her, but for all he is holding her up, she is keeping her hands to herself.

“If you are not willing to take be to bed, say so at once, and no more will be said on the subject,” she replies, bluntly enough to surprise him. “I have seen you every year since I was young. I have wanted you since I became a woman.”

That can’t have been long, Vesemir thinks uncharitably, but he must remind himself that human lives pass quickly, to a Witcher. “I do not fuck for coin,” he informs her sharply, but rather than taking offense, she brushes it aside.

“There is work that needs doing,” she repeats. “The rest is just… something extra.” Almost like an accident, she rubs herself against him. Despite himself, Vesemir groans aloud, and his flesh is stirring. Old man, Lambert calls him. Even Eskel has done the same. Geralt thinks it but will not say it aloud, and they are right, all of them, his boys, but he is not so old he doesn’t remember this.

The girl might as well be one of those spring-blooming flowers, as bright as heart’s blood, as temporary as that arterial gush. A babe in arms compared to Vesemir himself, but she doesn’t feel like a babe in his arms, lush breasts pressed to his chest, heartbeat strong against him, like the quick dart of a hummingbird’s compared to his own. Old enough to choose her own path, old enough to know what it is she asks for.

Vesemir has had to bury so many of his brethren, but he himself is not yet entombed. He is still alive, and absurdly, he is somewhat flattered.

“If you are sure,” he rumbles, the vibration of his words passing from his body into hers, and the girl, Sasha is her name, she had whispered it in his ear again then bitten the lobe with a saucy little smile – she laughs, a bright victorious sound, and the sight of her, skin like sugared cream, eyes like the moment that light first hits a stream. Glinting, and full of promise.

“I am sure,” she says, and takes him by the hand, lays him down in her bed like an old, scarred Witcher is a precious thing, to be held close to one’s heart. He could be the oldest living thing on the Continent, bar ancient trees and even older sorcerers. There could be more blood on his hands, red blood and black blood and the ichor of evil things, that on any other pair of hands. Yet he can touch without incurring injury; can be kind, can be gentle. His hands are marked by scars and callouses, but do not show the worst of their use.

A mercy, that.

He kisses her, this Sasha girl who giggles when he rolls her little frame under his own, who claws at the leather on his back in futile attempt to find his skin. He worries for a moment he’ll crush her, but when he tries to shift some of his weight off her body, she makes an aggrieved noise and pulls him back down. Dainty white hands, without scars, with only the signs of wear of honest work.

He remembers this dance.

Sasha’s hands give up on his jerkin and are having more success with the laces of his breeches. Vesemir grunts when her palm brushes against his cock, and the wicked-sparkle in her eyes, that secret power that all women seem to know, how to spur a man on. She gets his cock free and wraps her whole hand around it, almost too small to reach, and Vesemir wanted to take his time but it’s been decades, horrible lonely cold decades with only his own hand for release, and the scent of her want is filling up his nose, crowding thought clean out of his head.

He rips her skirt all the way up to her waist, gets a half-hearted glare for his trouble, before she wraps her legs right around his waist and sinks him into her. gods, but her strong legs, the vice-grip of her body, the fragrant sweat-scent rising from her skin; the rough ragged noises falling from her mouth. _Yes_ , and _harder_ , all the usual things, and some not so common; _you’re so good, fuck; you’re so fucking big, all of you, it’s like being bedded by a mountain –_

Yes, he likes that, the notion that he is as inexorable as that, as steady. He doesn’t feel it, his balls are already aching for release, but she can hardly expect him to last forever when she’s clinging to his shoulders and panting in his ear, wet tongue and breath on his skin. Rocking up into him like she was made to take his cock.

Vesemir pulls back, feels for the tight hard knot in amongst the slickness, and rolls his thumb over it, changes the angle of his hips to thrust deep. He loves girls like this, women, who get off as easy as men do; he watches Sasha go over the edge, her red-bitten lips, the bow-bend of her body, the swift spasm around his cock.

Not so old, he thinks dryly, to be able to manage this, and comes on the next thrust into that wet clamping heat, fucking what must be a year’s worth of seed up into that secret place, so different from his own mutable flesh. Gods, but the relief of it, not to have to get up and fumble for his coin purse, to let a warm living breathing soft woman nuzzle at the hair of his chest and drift gently in and out of dreams, her soft voice hoarser now, like a song in a language he used to know. Perhaps later he’ll lick the sour-salt of himself out of her, or show off his strength to make her laugh, fuck her against the wall with her legs around his waist again, clinging to him tight. Perhaps he’ll allow himself the luxury of being a foolish old man showing off for a woman far too young for him, one of the commonest things in the world. For the space between heartbeats, perhaps, he can be just like everyone else.

He can sleep, in the dimming light of the coming evening, as the last gasp of winter gives way to spring, and the world wakes up around him.


End file.
